Wednesday, December 26, 2012

This is a major reason why we are having so many problems in the US. The reasons underlying are at heart spiritual:

Fathers disappear from households across America - Washington Times: "In every state, the portion of families where children have two parents, rather than one, has dropped significantly over the past decade. Even as the country added 160,000 families with children, the number of two-parent households decreased by 1.2 million. Fifteen million U.S. children, or 1 in 3, live without a father, and nearly 5 million live without a mother. In 1960, just 11 percent of American children lived in homes without fathers."

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Really long but fascinating article on the two main types of debate today:

On Triggering and the Triggered, Part 4 | Alastair's Adversaria: "Offence-taking is a tried and tested tactic by which certain movements can dismiss critics without need for engagement, and bend society to their wishes. It is enabled by society’s lack of nerve, and by a persistence and willingness to take advantage of society’s weakness on the part of those employing it. Over the last few decades it has been used extensively by the feminist and gay rights movements. While many of the positions held by these movements may be perfectly justified, they have advanced in many quarters by silencing opponents and inoculating themselves against criticism, characterizing opponents or critics and their positions as hateful or insensitive and petitioning powerful allies to close down their voices."

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Education is changing even more rapidly than I expected. That's a good thing:

The End of the University as We Know It - Nathan Harden - The American Interest Magazine: "n fifty years, if not much sooner, half of the roughly 4,500 colleges and universities now operating in the United States will have ceased to exist. The technology driving this change is already at work, and nothing can stop it. The future looks like this: Access to college-level education will be free for everyone; the residential college campus will become largely obsolete; tens of thousands of professors will lose their jobs; the bachelor’s degree will become increasingly irrelevant; and ten years from now Harvard will enroll ten million students."

Sunday, December 09, 2012

New book "A Higher Call" tells of interactions between American WWII pilot Charlie Brown and German flying ace Franz Stigler - NYPOST.com:On Dec. 20, 1943, a young American bomber pilot named Charlie Brown found himself somewhere over Germany, struggling to keep his plane aloft with just one of its four engines still working. They were returning from their first mission as a unit, the successful bombing of a German munitions factory. Of his crew members, one was dead and six wounded, and 2nd Lt. Brown was alone in his cockpit, the three unharmed men tending to the others. Brown’s B-17 had been attacked by 15 German planes and left for dead, and Brown himself had been knocked out in the assault, regaining consciousness in just enough time to pull the plane out of a near-fatal nose dive.

None of that was as shocking as the German pilot now suddenly to his right.

Monday, December 03, 2012

The Deepest Source of Our Troubles - Ricochet.com:
Why, then, you may ask -- if you even remember the question I posed some paragraphs back -- should libertarians be social conservatives? The answer is simple. Single mothers and their offspring are bound for the most part to become wards of the state. For a man and a woman who are married to rear offspring is a chore. It may be fulfilling, but it is demanding and hard. It requires sacrifice and discipline. For a single person to do so and to do it well requires a species of heroism. For a single person to do so at all requires help -- and that is where we are. For we now take it for granted that we are to pay for the mistakes that the single mother (and her sexual partner) made. We now, in fact, presume that she is entitled to our help -- and we now have a political party in power built on that premise.We are to pay for her groceries through WIC (Women, Infants, Children), for her medical care through Medicaid, for the contraceptives that she does not have the discipline to use properly and for the morning-after pill should she slip up and need an abortion. Her right to be promiscuous trumps our right to the fruits of our own labor.'via Blog this'

About Me

Prior to his position as lead pastor in Hilmar California, Ron was senior pastor of Cross Road Assembly in Florence Oregon. He previously served on the pastoral staff at Atlantic Christian Assembly in Cape Town, South Africa, as well as Academic Site Director at Cornerstone Christian College in the same city. He was raised in California.
Ron has a B.A. in Ministerial Studies from Bethany College; an M.A. in Cross-Cultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary, and a Master of Divinity from Assemblies of God Theological Seminary.
Ron is married to Karol, his wife of 25 years. They have a 14 year old daughter, Katie.
In his spare time Ron enjoys antiques, bicycling, computers, old cars, shooting, fishing and reading.
e-mail me at ronsbloviating at gmail dot com (change the at and dot)